...and back to the usual stuff

The grass is cut, the penstemons, roses, aquilegias and cosmos are dead-headed; the terrace is weeded, the pond topped up and the brambles have had a bit of discouragement.  I took the good and faithful VW along to SETyres this morning for its first MoT (a bit early, but it suits us to have an anniversary in July rather than September).  It failed.  I'd wandered off to sample the charms of the industrial estate meanwhile, and by the time I returned, they'd sensibly seen to the fail categories - tax disc placed too far into the area swept by the wipers, and similar felonies by the GPS holder and the Lagrasse parking permit.  Deep sigh.  At least I wasn't charged a re-test fee, and the test fee was a sight lower than most.  I've also had the front tyres re-balanced - they were OK for UK conditions, but at French motorway cruise speeds there was a bit of a tingle at the steering wheel rim.  It was also pulling to one side, so I got them to correct the tracking: I guess the Escala de l'Ours must have knocked it about a bit.  £40-odd bill: not to be sneezed at.  Specially when they didn't charge for the balancing - as indeed they didn't oughter. 

We cropped the first of our Charlotte potatoes yesterday, since one of the pots was looking a bit yellowed.  Not a bad crop: we had the pea-sized spuds in an omelette yesterday with some sliced leftover Speldhurst sausages (delicious!),  a few more with some rather disappointing ASDA breaded prawns at lunchtime, and we shall have some more tonight with the saltinboca.  The tomatoes are coming along nicely too, but we'll have to wait a bit for them.  Our rather tired sage plant has flourished while we've been away, so I plan to take a few cuttings, now that it is getting rather woody.  The new herbs are coming along nicely: though the French tarragon is still a little shy, the oregano is coming along well.  The mint is protesting a bit at being hemmed in by potato plants, but will no doubt survive, as it always does. 

One thing about coming home is that we're once again subjected to aircraft noise, since we live under the final approach to Gatport Airwick, as a friend calls it.  It's a bit of a pain on humid nights when we have to leave windows open, but it can also be interesting.  http://www.flightradar24.com alerts us to anything unusual coming over.  Today's crop included the first 787 we've seen, a Thomson flight from Cancun.  Incredibly quiet, according to two old geezers in dressing gowns gazing skywards from the terrace.  Later, an Open Skies 757 came in - odd: it normally plies between Orly and Newark. But I can't say I'm sufficiently motivated to research why.

Home

Our last day in Spain was perhaps the best.  We set off quite early, filled the tank and took to the hills, enjoying generally excellent roads and dramatic scenery.  We hadn’t known what to expect of the landscape, but certainly hadn’t expected to go as high as the 1200m of the Portillo de la Sía.  The views were slightly spoiled by haze, but were mighty impressive all the same.  At the Mirador de Aja we were rewarded not only by huge views but by a flying display by 15 or so vultures.  There were more bicycles than cars on the roads: one forgets that Spain is just about as bike-crazy as France. 

Near Portillo de la Sía

 Santander too was a surprise.  I’d taken a look at the approaches to the port on Google Earth, and rather dismissed the place as a typical sprawling city of commercial and retail parks with a grid-pattern central district.  That’s all true, but beyond the centre to the north lies an extensive and rather posh seaside resort, complete with a casino and century-old luxury hotels.  Also on the sea front is the huge wedding cake building that houses the head office of the Banco de Santander.  We paused for a shandy by the lighthouse at Cabo Major, and watched the ferry as it arrived from Portsmouth.  We tracked it back up the bay, and it was just berthing as we arrived at the port at 17:15. 

Our hearts sank when the sign lit up saying that boarding would start from 19:15.  At least it was warm and still: many’s the time I’ve had to hang around the port of Dover in bitter winds and stinging rain.  When boarding finally began – and they’d taken most of the trucks through by then – the process took well over an hour, presided over by a young man who zipped round the place on an electric trike.  I suppose there may have been some method in his approach, but I’m damned if I could work it out.  To the untutored, it looked random and chaotic, and I was starting to dread the disembarkation process at the other end.  When we were finally ushered on to the ship we were led down a ramp to deck 2, noting that a huge trap door had been lifted to allow access.  So we were interred beneath the lorries.  I was made to park so close to the side that I had to scramble over the centre console to get out of the car. 

Homeward bound

From there on, things improved.  Our cabin was perfectly adequate: we had an outside 4-berth one to ourselves.  Down at the blunt end of the Cap Finistère it was quite noisy, but although we could tell from our midships cabin that we were on a motor vessel, the noise and vibration were not at all intrusive.  The restaurant too was pretty adequate – our main courses were very good, if the starters left a bit to be desired.  23 hours is a long time to be on board a ferry, however, and the public spaces are distressingly full of the public.  We gritted our teeth and sat through the quiz, but discos, cash bingo, children’s parties and face-painting are not altogether our thing.  From where I tried it, the free wifie was utterly hopeless, and it doesn’t work in the cabins, unfortunately.  Still, a day off the internet is no bad thing once in a while, and the sea was still enough to allow a nice long siesta.

The approach to Portsmouth was really interesting.  I have done it before, but not, as I remember, in daylight.  Three cruise liners were leaving as we came in, one of them the Deutschland, which served as competitors’ quarters during the London Olympics, moored in the Pool of London.  A hovercraft left Southsea for the Isle of Wight just as we motored by, and we had good views of the dockyard as we came in.  Disembarkation was a pleasant surprise: we docked just before the 19:45 scheduled arrival time, and were in the car by 19:55.  We’d expected a long wait, so had bought sandwiches: they were barely eaten before we were beckoned out of our parking slot, and we were through passport checks and on the road by 20:10.  The roads weren’t bad either, so we were home and filling the kettle by 21:50.  Celia had kindly opened some upstairs windows for us, so with a little help from the fan, we slept long and comfortably.

The irrigation system seems to have worked pretty well during our 4-week absence:  I’ll turn out a first pot of potatoes later.  Roses have flowered like mad, and the rather feeble Picadilly rose has responded to treatment and put up a couple of strong new shoots.  Top marks to the Justice of the Peace, which is a mass of flowers.  This morning’s thunderstorm will not have helped, and with more rain forecast today, I think we’ve seen the best of it.  The rudbeckias at the front are sulking a bit.  I’ll administer water and a sound talking-to. 

Friday in Bilbao

Yesterday being our first full day in Bilbao, we were out early to organise our bus passes – only to find that those responsible for issuing them were not.  Still, we had a look round the market just as it was opening.  A preponderance of meat and fish, and only one stall that we saw was offering fruit and vegetables.  Onward to the Arriaga tourist office, to find that it opened over an hour later at 09:30.  A gentle stroll along the quay to the Zubizuri Bridge, heckled by ducks on the river – which is full of enormous trout, by the way.  Back up to the main shopping drag (imaginatively named the Gran Via) to locate the local Corte Inglés department store, and its separate bookshop.  Then back down to the Arriaga to get our bus passes.  10€ per man for two days’ unlimited bus, tram, metro and funicular travel cannot be bad. 

The Guggenheim sportingly did not question my senior citizen status, and we enjoyed the visit very much.  The most impressive exhibition, to my eyes, was Richard Serra's The Matter of Time, a vast steel sculpture of waves, a maze, spirals and curves, taking up a gallery the size of an aircraft hangar (sponsored, unsurprisingly, by Arcelor-Mittal).  But the most impressive thing is the building itself – the atrium is simply amazing: there isn’t a straight line in sight, and the way it uses the light is superb.  Of the titanium, glass and limestone outside, I’m less convinced, though it is an amazing landmark.  Jeff Koons’s floral puppy is a delight at this time of year: a mass of bedding plants standing some 10m tall.

From there we took the tram back to the Zubizuri bridge, and walked up to the funicular for the ride up to the Atrantxa summit.  It was a little less sweaty up there, and although there was a lot of haze, the views were pretty good.  This is more than can be said for lunch, which was indigestible and served with poor grace.  Feeling hot and digestively challenged, we headed back to the flat for a siesta, and slept despite the heat and noises off.

 

Later in the evening we opted for dinner on the roof terrace, only to find that the turntable of the microwave cooker in the flat does not work.  Result: two pieces of salmon cooked, the other barely thawed.  Not helpful coming after the lousy lunch, with unfortunate consequences this morning for yr. obed. servt.  Still, the terrace proved a pleasant place to sit in the evening, with a bit of breeze and nice views of the setting sun.

Relatively lazy day today: we did a lot of walking and sightseeing yesterday, so were altogether a little less ambitious.  We took a couple of rides on service buses, which is always a good way to do a bit of people watching and to see the ordinary parts of town.  Bilbao being very hilly, we got many long views of the city.  One ride was on the circular route that passes our door, and another went up the hill to the south west of the city.  On arriving at the terminus, the charming blonde driver switched off, and came back to speak to us.  On my saying in Portuguese that I didn’t speak Spanish, she dropped into English and explained that we had to run our tickets through the machine again for the return journey in case an inspector got on the bus.  Not that it would have made a lot of difference, in that we have rover tickets, but nice of her to prompt us.  We chatted for a while until her cigarette break was cut short by a bleep from the cab telling her to get her bus in gear.  She waved us a cheerful farewell when we got off at the Corte Inglés to get our evening provisions. 

Talking of which, El Corte Inglés has done quite well out of us in the two full days we’ve been here.  Given my rotten Spanish, it’s all too easy just to buy in supermarkets and department stores.  We’re neither of us wild about tapas/pintxos, having seen what’s on offer (predominantly bread), so we opted for the department store cafeteria for lunch.  Another mistake.  Escalopes sourced from the cobbler’s stand next door, served with insufficently drained pasta, hence soggy chapelure, and chips, also soggy.  The pasta was adorned with a dollop of tomato sauce and a spoonful of bolognese ditto.  Nothing objectionable about the parmesan, but that could be explained by its lack of flavour…

Altogether more impressive was the vast stained glass window in the main railway station, depicting the industry, agriculture and leisure of the region.  The station was very quiet – it only boasts about a dozen long distance connexions a day, the journey times reflecting the huge size of the country and the fact that, unlike France, it hasn’t got much of a high-speed rail network.

And so, having bought a map to help us plan tomorrow’s itinerary, to bed for another sweaty siesta.  Simple dinner with a bottle of hastily selected sweetish white Rioja, and tea on the roof as the sun went down.  Quite looking forward to getting home now: but tomorrow’s drive and the long sail home could be entertaining meanwhile.

...and up into the mountains

When the air is clear, we usually make a trip up past Bouisse to a point at which we have a fine view of the chain of the Pyrenees, as well as of the highest mountain in the Corbières, the Pech de Bugarach, visible here at the left end of the skyline.  Sometimes the wind is nearly enough to blow one off one's feet, but yesterday was almost still, and it was a pleasure just to stand and take in the view, serenaded by a skylark.  The two donkeys, one black and one white, that we sometimes meet there were in a field further down, trying to find a bit of shade.

Another day, another country.

After a two-shower morning doing the final cleaning and laundry - and I could have done with a third - we have shut up Château Smith for a month or so.  We dropped our lovely guests at the airport in Toulouse and had lunch there with them in the restaurant that looks out across the field to the A330 bit of the Airbus works.  A Singapore Airlines A330, all in the green except for the tail fin, obligingly took off for our entertainment, followed soon afterwards by one of the works A380s.  Both, being light, took off with incredibly short runs.

Fond farewells later, we headed out for the motorway, arriving in Bilbao after a somewhat sportif drive along the motorways of the Spanish Basque country.  Fabulous scenery, for those whose knuckles were not whitely gripping the wheel.  Dotty navigated us successfully to our destination, but it was useful to have rehearsed the later stages beforehand on Google Earth, since her Spanish accent is almost as toe-curling as her French one.

First impressions of our new digs could scarcely have been worse.  We drove into the underground car park, and made our way up to reception, to be greeted by a bolshy young receptionist who gave me a ticking off for driving into the car park without first reporting to him.  A German family ahead of us evidently got a similar treatment.  Well, the flat seems all right, though very hot and lacking air conditioning.  We took a stroll into town this evening and had a glass each of excellent wine at a bar in the Casco Viejo, but weren't impressed by the menu, nor by the pintxos/tapas in any of the bars we looked at.  Perhaps we were just too tired and scratchy to be adventurous.  Home made tortilla back at the flat, made with some of the contents of the leftovers cool bag - one of the benefits of renting self-catering accommodation. 

The situation of the bits of town we've seen is superb - built on a narrow, winding river valley, with tall blocks on either side, decorated with fine ironwork.  The Casco Viejo is a little bit daunting, with tall buildings to either side of narrow streets, sometimes with washing hanging between them à la Napolitaine.  We'll explore further tomorrow, armed with our Bilbao Cards, which should give us unlimited travel on the buses, trams and metro. 

Busy week

For our last week here, we've had the excellent company of guests Andy and Celia.  I began to be a little nervous when they said their plane was due into Toulouse at 09:15.  The Toulouse ring road is not the greatest place to be at any time of day, and particularly between 12:00 and 12:30, when people are hurtling home for their apéro and lunch - or more probably for lunch following the apéritif.  Morning rush hour is almost as bad, except that the collisions are at lower speeds.  Not that we had any, fortunately.  Dotty (our resident GPS lady) got thoroughly confused, and started leading us off into totally clogged-up suburbs, and then into tortuous detours, so it was around 09:40 when we arrived at the airport.  The next task was to find Andy and Celia: the 'Arrivals' sign points you to the opposite end of the airport from the one where they had actually arrived, and we'd booked into the 10-minute car park.  It didn't help that Martyn doesn't know how to drive my extraordinarily complicated smartphone - I'm scarcely better at it, I admit.  So the stressometer was well into the red sector by the time we finally connected.  Any road up, we got them safely home, and have been having a lovely week.

Quite a lot of the planning has not worked, however.  The first attempt at lunch and boat rides in Le Somail was frustrated by the fact that the restaurant was full, set out for a coach trip, funeral or whatever.  That gave us a good excuse to head down to the seaside at Gruissan, where all lunched and some paddled.  Nice place, Gruissan Port, but I've never known a time when it didn't smell of drains here and there. 

On Thursday we had some neighbours round for apéritifs.  Les and Julia are Brits who live most of the year in Philadelphia, and are great company.  We hardly knew each other before last week, having chatted briefly on the way to a piano recital last summer.  But Julia and I have been playing internet word games for a while now (she usually thrashes me), so it was largely a matter of picking up the hitherto unarticulated conversation.  It turns out that Les is a keen painter, and owns a separate property in the village, one room over the other, which serves as his studio and - potentially - gallery.  He has been working on a trio of paintings of the village on vast canvases: I'll post photographs of them at some point if he agrees and if I can get them off the said complicated mobile phone!  Les has kindly given me a box of acrylics that he in turn had been given by Mary Fernandez-Morris, once one of the village's most accomplished painters, whose eyesight, alas, no longer allows her to paint.  I've limited myself largely to the primaries for the past ten years or so, but now have a selection of colours that I'll need a bit of instruction on how to deploy. 

The village has its fireworks on 13 July, to avoid clashing with those of the préfecture town on le quatorze juîllet itself.  We ambled up the hill as usual to watch them, and I can't help feeling they've been working on a restricted budget this year.  Very good display all the same, and a sociable event at which one gets to chat to visitors from nearby villages.  There was a little jazz concert in the village as well - and the streets had largely been cleared by the time we headed out again to Le Somail for lunch. 

Splendid lunch as always, but this time with entertainment by a group of four a capella singers from the

Auvergne. They offered a good selection of numbers, moving around so that at various times they were performing to individual tables.  (They more than made up for the fact that, when we went round to the church a bit later for the published organ recital, the place was locked.)  We had hoped to go and play on the canal again in a little battery boat, but by the time we went to get one, they were all booked.  Oh well, next year, maybe. 

Yesterday we went for a ride down the coast.  Collioure was jumping as usual, and the car parks were full, so we had to drive through, pausing only at the local Fortnum's to get some bottles of water.  Martyn found a red and white dotted road (parcours dangereux ou difficile) from Port Vendres to Cap Béar.  The last time we used such a road was when we scrambled up most of the Pic du Canigou a couple of years ago, at much risk to my undergarments.  This road was at least tarmacked, but the absence of armco between the vehicle and oblivion was somewhat sphincter-testing.  Amazing views from the lighthouse, however.

The railway tendency enjoyed the views of the extraordinary stations and marshalling yards at Cerbère and Port Bou, where the standard and Iberian gauges meet, and the Talgo trains telescope their axles, in for north-bound, and out for south.  The yards dwarf the towns to which they are attached, and I suppose they will partly lose their raison d'être once the high speed line comes fully into service - though I guess it will be a while before the majority of freight services use it.  The old coast road is really spectacular, and we made plenty of stops to gape and take pictures.  We went as far as Cadaquès, where we paused for shandy and people-watching.  Nice little place: we hadn't been there for a decade or so.  I'm told there's a Michelin-starred restaurant there.  Noted.

Near Port Bou, where the Pyrenees meet the sea

 

Back on the road tomorrow; Andy and Celia to Gatwick via Toulouse, and your obedient servants to Bilbao for a few days before the long sail home.  Departing on the 63rd anniversary of a deservedly unmemorable date.

Back to the canal

Before the friends arrived, we were treated to a bit of theatre.  A fellow on the opposite bank was struggling with spomething pretty vigorous on the end of his fishing line, shouting to his friends for help landing it.  After quite a long struggle, they landed a huge fish with a nasty looking set of teeth - a pikeperch (sandre), I think.  I heard someone say that it had been eating the ducks, and can quite believe it.  It was huge: a good metre long.  Glad to say there were plenty of ducks and geese on the canal despite its attentions - one mallard had nine ducklings in tow.  We took out one of the little battery boats for an hour, which was fun as usual, though Martyn took a while to get used to its odd handling characteristics. 

Martin, Patricia and Chota (Photo: Barbara Schiphorst)

Lunch yesterday at the excellent Auberge du Somail.  We'd arranged to meet friends there: they live a similar distance in the opposite direction, so it's a convenient and pleasant meeting point.  We were quite worried when their arrival was delayed by three quarters of an hour, and had in fact ordered our meals by the time they arrived.  (Choice yesterday of melon and ham or gazpacho with what I think was a melon and cucumber sorbet, followed by squid or an onglet of beef with an onion and red wine sauce.  Then a choice of puds (which our friends swapped for a coffee with the willing co-operation of the restaurant).  Pretty good for the basic 22€ menu, and the surroundings are delightful - most tables are on the terrace or the towpath in the partial shade of a fine (and so far healthy) plane tree.

One amusing moment on the way to Le Somail.  The road we use follows the canal for a number of miles, sometimes leaving it for a mile or so, but never far from the canal embankment.  At one point, all we could see was a big blue parasol making its stately progress between the trees.  The rest of the boat it was on was concealed by the vegetation.  Faintly surreal.

Broom. Glorious, yes, but...

We've never seen so much broom in flower in these parts.  It really is magnificent, and the hillsides are carpeted with it.  I guess it has to do with the number of vineyards that have been grubbed up or abandoned, though the vineyards tend to have been colonised by wild oats.  We stopped for a moment earlier this afternoon at a red traffic light not far from here, and as usual, shut off the engine and opened the window.  The scent from the broom by the roadside was colossal - and within seconds my eyes were stinging and I was on the way to another sneezing fit.  Senile-onset hay fever.  Not fun.

We've been to the préfecture town today to get a few bits and pieces.  Though we have our two laptops with us, there are also two desktop computers in the house, and a few bucks have brought the one that remained unconnected  back into service: a tiny wireless adaptor and a wireless mouse and we're back on the air throughout the curtilage.  We've also replaced some kitchen bits and pieces, so are a little more confident of not poisoning the guests.  But I struggle to understand the willingness of French retail customers to stand in line - we must have stood in the queue for 20 minutes before we got to the cashier.  Maybe I haven't been here quite long enough this time to adapt to the pace of life.  But I notice that there's a growing 'Supermarket Drive' tendency: people now tend to buy on the internet and drive in to collect the order.  Not quite the constant stream of delivery vans we see in England these days, but I think I see the logic.